PA R I S I A N WA L K WAY S ❘ R U E O B E R K A M P F
R U E O B E R K A M P F ❘ PA R I S I A N WA L K WAY S
RUE OBERKAMPF Considered a case study for gentrification, this gourmet street in Paris’s 11th arrondissement is putting customers at the top of the menu. Jeffrey T Iverson samples the atmosphere…
LA CAVE VERRE VOLÉ
L’ARBRE À CAFÉ
LA BELLE MER
CHAMBELLAND
CHEZ L’AUVERGNAT
BOUCHERIES FRANCIS
Twenty years ago, Cyril Bordarier opened a wine shop-bistro hybrid (dubbed a cave à manger) on the Canal Saint-Martin which would become a mecca for a new wine movement – vin naturel, signifying a natural, chemical-free approach to winemaking. Soon after, he opened this boutique on rue Oberkampf in a former charcuterie shop, which today stocks one of the finest collections of natural wines in France.
Java lovers come here to discover the company that introduced the idea of grand cru coffee to French gastronomy. With an approach to coffee inspired by wine, founder Hippolyte Courty imports single estate, biodynamically grown, single variety coffees, fermented and roasted with precision to unveil maximum complexity, and to create an espresso unlike anything served at your average corner brasserie.
At a time when many fishmongers are closing, La Belle Mer offers a new version of an age-old profession. This small shop boasts a choice selection of very fresh fish and shellfish sourced four times a week from small, eco-minded fishermen and producers. Plus, they’ll even cook it for you on site to enjoy on their al fresco patio or to-go, be it a sole meunière, fish and chips, mussels or ceviche.
In a country where baguettes and pastries are sacrosanct, Chambelland is a bakery which proves that gluten-free doesn’t have to mean pleasure-free. Their delicious breads made from rice and buckwheat flours have been embraced by chefs such as Alain Ducasse. Their briochelike pains au sucre, lemon meringue pies and quiches are loved by gourmets regardless of their tolerance for gluten.
Behind this cheese shop’s modern, streamlined design is a second-generation fromager passionate about artisan, raw milk cheeses and French gastronomy. His elegantly presented array of perfectly ripened cheeses represents the finest creations of the most respected artisan cheesemakers from every region in France, and his wines, charcuterie and prepared dishes celebrate the best of French terroirs.
Boucheries Francis brings modern packaging to noble French traditions – it’s the butcher’s shop of a brighter future, when consumers will only buy meat from farms that raise heritage breed chickens, cattle and pigs in the most respectful conditions. Here, believers of the motto ‘eat less but better’ come for heritage-breed poultry and pork, and vacuum-packed steaks of the finest French-raised Wagyu.
61 rue Oberkampf Tel. +33 1 88 33 91 81
O
berkampf is just the name of another street in the French capital, and yet today it’s synonymous with Parisian nightlife, hip restaurants, chic boutiques, and in a deeper sense, transformation. For if today this vibrant axis of the 11th arrondissement is the place to be, historically it was the place in between – a rue-faubourg, or suburban highway, linking Paris to the formerly independent commune of Belleville. In fact, the Oberkampf neighbourhood has been a favourite case study for scholars researching the process of gentrification. To peruse journal articles with titles like “From the Rue-Faubourg to the Rue ‘Trendy’: Oberkampf and the Centralisation of Leisure in Paris” or “Gentrification and Retail Dynamics in Brussels and Paris”, it’s clear that Oberkampf’s evolution has fascinated academics – and no wonder. As one 2006 study in the Belgian Journal of Geography put it, gentrification is playing out on Rue Oberkampf in ways “far more complex than a process of ‘old’ retail forms being displaced by new ‘trendy’ ones.” Indeed, today on Rue Oberkampf, some of the most traditional 52 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Feb/Mar 2021
Tuck into delicious seafood on La Belle Mer’s terrace
2 rue Jacquard Tel. +33 1 47 00 69 75
professions of all – baker, butcher, cheesemonger, wine merchant – are not being displaced, but are growing in number, and evolving in the most surprising ways. With creativity and an avant-garde sensibility, a new generation of artisans and entrepreneurs is leading a renaissance of traditional food professions on Rue Oberkampf. “If traditional businesses don’t modernise to offer something that is new or qualitatively different, people will just go to the supermarket,” says Nicolas Merlen, manager of the neighbourhood’s new hybrid fish shop and delicatessen, La Belle Mer. “Many streets in Paris have seen their traditional food businesses swallowed up by clothing chains and shoe shops,” says Francis Berger of the next-generation butcher shop Boucheries Francis. “Yet today on Rue Oberkampf the number of gastronomic addresses keeps growing. Between Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and Parmentier alone, you have multiple bakeries, pastry shops, butchers, cheesemongers, greengrocers, wine merchants… it’s a street for epicureans!” If Rue Oberkampf is now a destination, for centuries it was mostly a means of getting somewhere else. For more than 300 years it was known as the chemin de
14 rue Ternaux Tel. +33 1 43 55 07 30
IMAGES © J T IVERSON, BISTROT OBERKAMPF, JEROME GALLAND
38 rue Oberkampf Tel. +33 1 43 14 99 46
60 rue Oberkampf Tel. +33 1 48 05 31 83
Ménilmontant – the way to Ménilmontant, stretching from the Temple quartier in Paris up to this hilltop village. It was only after Ménilmontant and neighbouring Belleville became part of the capital in 1859 that the street got its own name, christened in 1864 after Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, the 18th-century industrialist whose cotton printing factory in Jouy-en-Josas invented the fabric toile de Jouy. By the 19th century, the street had become industrious indeed, teeming with shops and packed with metal and leather workers. Today, to step off the Ménilmontant métro onto Boulevard de Belleville and turn down Rue Oberkampf, one soon discovers the vestiges of this industrious past. At nº 154 an opening in a building draws the curious into a cobblestoned passageway leading into la cité Durmar. Originally a lane lined with market gardeners, over time, the little houses the farmers built next to their plots became workshops for craftspeople. A few steps down at nº 104-106 is another remarkably well preserved passageway – cité du Figuier, with its stone culvert running down the middle and its 19th-century buildings where workers lived and worked. Many
A mural at Café Charbon, one of many popular addresses on Rue Oberkampf
82 rue Oberkampf Tel. +33 6 99 40 38 61
doubtless spent wild evenings during the Belle Époque just across the street from here at the Café Charbon (nº 109). Founded in 1863, this magnificent café still boasts its original décor with mosaic floors, zinc bar, and wall paintings. Rue Oberkampf stretches more than a kilometre from Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire up to Boulevard de Belleville, but it was here, just north of Rue Saint-Maur, that its transformation into one of the city’s trendiest streets began in the 1990s. Artists, architects and other creative types began moving into abandoned ateliers and rehabilitating historic sites like La Cité du Figuier. Café Charbon became the locus of Oberkampf’s nightlife once again, drawing revellers from across the city. The southern wall of Café Charbon, overlooking the verdant café patio of La Place Verte (nº 105), was soon appropriated by two French street art pioneers for a project dubbed Le M.U.R., where new artists continue to paint fresh murals every month. In 1992, restaurateur Michel Picquart and chef Olivier Gaslain opened Le Villaret at 13 rue Ternaux, a quiet street parallel to Rue Oberkampf, transforming Oberkampf into a foodie destination as well. ❯❯ Feb/Mar 2021 FRANCE TODAY ❘ 53